Negotiating National Identities Between Globalization, the Past and 'the Other'

Negotiating National Identities presents an empirically detailed and theoretically wide-ranging analysis of the complex political and cultural struggles taking place in contemporary Europe. Taking contemporary Austria and her controversial identity politics as its central case study in a discussion of developments across a variety of national and pan-European contexts, this book demonstrates that neo-nationalism has been one among several competing reactions to the processes and challenges of globalization, whilst inclusive notions of identity and belonging are shown to have emerged from the realms of civil society and cultural production. Shifting the study of national identities from the party-political to the social, cultural and economic realms, this book raises important questions of human rights, social exclusion and ideological struggle in a globalizing era, drawing attention to the contested nature of European politics and civil societies, in which existing configurations of power and exclusion are both reproduced and challenged. As such, it will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of race and ethnicity, national identity and media and cultural studies.

Christian Karner is a Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. His research and publications centre on the negotiation of ethnic, national and religious identities and on urban sociology. He is author of Ethnicity and Everyday Life, and The Thought-World of Hindu Nationalism, and co-author Writing History, Constructing Religion.